Swift | Silent | Deadly


2021 Goal Progress: April

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In January of 2021 I committed to some New Year’s resolutions: spend 15 minutes per day learning Spanish, workout 3 times per week, shoot my bow 3 times per week, read 73 100 128 books, and stay off tobacco. This is my progress so far in the year. Aside from just my results there’s some really good information at the bottom of the article.

January, February, March

April, 2021

Week 1: Apr 4 – 10
This week was a nut-roll, anyway you look at it. It started Sunday at 7 AM with a 24-hour shift. Class Monday night, another 24 Wednesday that rolled right into a 12-hour clinical Thursday that ran two hours late, and another 12-hour clinical Saturday. That’s 76 hours of work, class, and clinicals. Still, I managed to put some numbers up – not perfect but better than nothing. I need to be better about pushing through on those hard weeks but I’m still proud of what I did manage.

  • Spanish: 100%
  • Workouts: 2/3 – kettle bell workout on the 5th (40# kb rounds 1 and 2, 35# kb round 3), cut/hauled a truckload of wood and dug footers for a new deck on the 6th…and that’s it.
  • Bow: 2/3 – 36 arrows on the 5th, 30 arrows on the 6th
  • Books: 1 – Untamed by Will Harlan
  • Tobacco Free: YES

Week 2: Apr 11 – 17
I was absolutely determined to do better this week, and I did pretty well.

One of the best books I’ve read in a very long time. Highly recommended.

Week 3: Apr 18 – 24
I gave myself a break this week, mostly intentionally. I worked all but two days this week. On the two days that I did work (Tuesday and Friday) I worked on building a deck. Not exactly a workout, but I did spend several hours moving very heavy lumber (10 and 12′ 2x12s, 12′ 2x10s, and 10′ 6x6s), banging nails, busting a solid concrete set of steps…etc. I didn’t get a true workout this week, but I did get something. I stuck with the Spanish and reading and gave the bow a rest this week. Back on the horse next week!

Week 4: Apr 25 – May 1

Some Thoughts

And that’s 1/3 of the year down! It’s hard to believe the year is going by so quickly. I’m not 100% on anything (having missed one day of Spanish last month) but I’m sticking with everything, and I’m happy with that. For those of you who have set your own goals: how’s it going? Where are you at on accomplishing them? If you’re behind, a third of the year is gone…but that means you still have two-thirds left. Get to work! A couple more thoughts:

Reading Goals:

One modification to my goal: read more books. I upped my goal again to 128. That’s exactly twice what I read last year and it’s going to be a little bit of a challenge. I talked about it in my end-of-year wrap up but it’s true: when you build momentum toward reading it becomes self-propelled. You find yourself really wanting  to read. But you have to start somewhere. Pick a nice, easy ebook that you can keep on your phone. Some great, easy places to start would be:

Or pick any subject you like and want to know more about – I guarantee there’s a book about it. Bottom line: just start!

Workouts:

I’ve been lazy on finding a new workout. The mental energy involved in finding a new workout seems tedious to me. But I did find one this month that I worked it in. Here it is – check it out. This work out taught me that doing different exercises is important. In short, it made me insanely sore in new places – the way any workout does if you haven’t worked out in a while.

So I’m branching out.  I just purchased purchased the Onnit Six Kettlebell workout program. I won’t be starting it for a couple weeks, but I do want something that programs for me, since that’s a huge hurdle for me. I’ll let you know what I think of the program once I’ve done it.

Oh, and I picked up a couple more kettlebells – one heavier (44#) and one lighter (18#) to increase the range of exercises and reps I can do.

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